PASO ROBLES,
Calif. -- When it comes to overcrowding problems at the jails, San Luis Obispo
County may be sitting on a gold mine.
Two Supervisors
from Monterey and San Luis Obispo County are looking at a potential solution in
an empty juvenile corrections facility in Paso Robles.
On the desolate Paso
Robles Airport road, may lie the solution to overcrowded jails on the Central
Coast.
The empty El Paso De
Robles Juvenile Corrections Facility.
"It was set up as a juvenile facility which is set up
similar to a prison or a jail so it has certainly some potential," says San Luis
Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson.
At its peak the
200-acre juvenile facility housed up to 1,000 inmates. Now, its been empty since
2008.
"A lot of county jails
are overcrowded so this becomes a potential facility to be able to house the
overflow," say Monterey County Supervisor Simon Salinas.
San Luis Obispo
Supervisor Frank Mecham and Monterey County Supervisor Simon Salinas want to
change that.
"We'll look at the
numbers," says Salinas. "We'll do the number crunching and certainly look to the
governor's office and say it's available and we'll make it work by providing the
funding to run the facility."
But what sounds good
in concept may be more difficult in reality. The cost of operating the facility
will be in the $20 million range.
The county is looking at options to charge the other 57
counties to house their inmates at the facility for a shared cost of $100 per
inmate a night or run only a portion of the facility instead of the entire
thing.
But the Sheriff says
the need for the facility is going to depend on how many counties will part net
to run it.
"It actually sounds
good in concept but doesn't look good on paper when you're talking about a $20
million, potentially, to run the facility," says Parkinson. "There's a lot of
work that's going to have to take place to figure out whether or not it will
pencil out."
Over the next six
months the counties will evaluate all options and Supervisor Salinas says it
costs $800,000 a year just to keep it
empty.
